Musings on the Scrying Glass

June 10, 2026

The new Moon of June is creeping closer.

In an attempt to not be a tired, depressed, grumpy, and unproductive lump during new moons, for about the last year I have instead been meeting with some Wiccans of the Reclaiming Tradition to scry. The idea was that if the Moon was going to be in a phase that is supposed to be secret and regenerative, one might as well try to work with it and try to connect to the subtle influences for instruction or revelation. Those mystic crystal visions aren’t going to come on their own.

The tradition is that the Moon’s final crescent signifies the endings of processes, either of the previous twenty-eight days or of the year. The moment when the dark Moon is between the Sun and the Earth is a time when unconscious processes become secretly energized and rejuvenated (and not tired and grumpy at all). And the very first sliver of a new Moon is the time to set intentions for the month or for new beginnings. Extra interpretive points if you add in seasonal flavors: a new Moon at October’s end would indicate that the veils between the worlds are extra sheer. We typically cast a ritual circle and then meditate on a dark blue glass sphere before dismissing the circle.

I do find myself sometimes wishing we were dancing in a larger group instead of five or six of us sitting around a collapsible table draped with fabrics decorated with mystic symbols and set up with ritual tools and beeswax candles at the world’s four corners surrounding a blue glass sphere. I do find myself sometimes feeling like this is an exercise in applied pareidolia or daydream interpretation. And in more practical moments I notice that I’m not producing something like Jung’s Red Book (which, now that I think of it, counts as a kind of Book of Shadows), or applying ritual means to political, physical, or personal ends. At least I’m not peering into the future to try to divine winning Lotto numbers.

However, there are enough surprising or startling phenomena to justify the continued practice—like that one time I looked into the sphere and instantly saw a miniature scene of someone with a backpack standing on a corner sidewalk with a rotunda in the distance, next to a kind of bike rack on one side and glowing, illegible letters on the other, and above, a figure in a draped cowl looked down from a portal of lunar fire. It was like seeing a completely new tarot card (which was cool, and I still haven’t figured out what it meant). The monthly practice is improving ritual technique; the discovered formula—“be whirling earth / be wheeling stars / be billowing veils / between the worlds”—works well to invoke the protective ritual circle. And there is an attempt to commune with the natural and spiritual world, to celebrate the moment of the new Moon and Earth cycles, and to transform through subtle wits and senses.

What I’ve learned:

• It can be useful to use tarot cards as an auxiliary meditation focus when the only thing I see in the blue glass orb is my inverted silhouette or reflected candles.

• Having a specific question or situation in mind is helpful; if you aim at nothing, you hit nothing.

• Old Dion Fortune was onto something when she wrote about rising above illusion when mentally traveling to the Sphere of the Moon (social media, I’m looking at you).

• Sometimes you’re just going to feel tired and grumpy instead of rejuvenated and mystic.

A Writer's Solstice Altar

I’ve connected with a writers’ Zoom session to write. I’m writing a blog entry instead of working on a short story because it is easier to write a blog entry. I am supposing that instant gratification is in play—and in any case, writing a blog entry is better than staring at a paragraph and spending an hour researching on the web to polish a single sentence; or going back-and-forth on cutting-and-pasting the opening paragraph of the moment; or, worst of all, staring at a blank screen and not writing anything.

Today is the Winter Solstice. It’s hard to believe that this time last year Mark and I were walking around Las Vegas. The Solstice Spiral Walks that I helped to facilitate with C.N. aren’t happening at the local UU Church any more, so I won’t be drawing chalk spirals as a guide for fir boughs and candles or playing a tone drum in the pouring rain while congregants walk a spiral and contemplate the returning light. On one hand, it’s one less thing to do; on the other hand, I miss holding contemplative ritual space, even if the only folks I really knew at UUCE were C.N., G.M., S.H., and some other acquaintances.

A couple of days ago, I attended a Starhawk-Wiccan Solstice ritual (and potluck) at a pagan friend’s house; they conduct rituals for the greater Eugene pagan community. The ritual reminded me a little of the ritual Sunday services at UUCE: there was a lot of singing and swaying in place. As we stood in a loose circle and sang songs about the Children of the Goddess, the joke “Why can’t Unitarians sing? / Because they’re too busy scanning ahead to see if they agree with the words” came to mind. During a moment of ritual contemplation, I was thankful to be married to Mark. I did not sing “Nobody can hold back the dark,” during a closing chorus, but it was a near thing.

I was going to say that it looks too rainy and grey this Solstice morning to focus the sun’s light onto a candle, but as I looked up from the computer screen, wan sunlight shone onto the kitchen nook. Perhaps, I thought, there will be a break in the clouds later for strong enough sunlight to shine through. —And as I watched, the sunlight strengthened.

Recognizing that there’s no time like the present when it comes to ritual (or astronomy) and the Oregon sky, I leapt up from the keyboard and away from the writers’ Zoom session, scooped up my Anubis matches, the giant magnifying lens, and a beeswax pillar candle in a copper cauldron. (Why, yes; I do have ritual tools readily handy at my house, doesn’t everyone?)

I hurried outside to the deck. There was honest-to-goodness blue sky above. The sun shone above a thick bank of grey clouds and grazed the roofline of our southern neighbors’ house. It’s winter solstice, and shadow of their house stretches across the yard and brushes up against our foundation. The wind gusted.

“Behind you.” Mark was entering and exiting the house to do some yard work.

The deck was relatively dry for a damp, Oregon winter day. I set up the candle on one of the four round outdoor end-tables I originally bought to use for altars and attempted to focus the sunlight onto the match held against the wick. A spotlight circle of sunlight shone on the outside of the candle; the wick was deep in a thin shell of beeswax from previous candle burnings. I broke off most of the wax, turned the candle, and tried to shine focused Solstice sunlight again.

“Behind you,” Mark said.

I stood over the candle looking down on it; a thin wisp of smoke rose from the wick. Then my hair fell forward in a curtain, which made it hard to see what I was doing and risked making Mark’s dire predictions about solstice fire, candles, and really any sort of combustion, come true. I riffled my pockets for a nonexistent hair tie, all the time watching the sun, the clouds, and the shadow of our neighbor’s house.

I pulled my hair behind me, crouched down, and refocused the sunlight. The wind gusted again. The magnifying lens projected an upside-down tree onto the white smoke of the smoldering wick; I moved the patio furniture altar out of the shadow of tree branches.

Mark, who was picking up dog poop from the yard, asked, “The sun’s pretty low. Have you ever done this this early before?”

“No,” I said, watching the cone of sunlight waver as I tried to place its focal point onto the wick. This was technically a ritual, and I hadn’t grounded, invoked a proper circle, or invited the four directions. I hadn’t reflected on the hinge of the year, or the returning light, or numinous and immanent Earth processes. I hadn’t taken a moment to dedicate or rededicate my life to anything in particular.

I quietly sang, “Bring from the center of the sun…” and flame sprang from the match and wick. The wind guttered the candle; I picked it up, held it close, went inside, and brought the candle to the desk—in the writers’ Zoom session, I saw myself, long haired, in red plaid, holding a copper cauldron with a flaming candle in my hands.

I placed the candle next to my keyboard and mouse. Happy Solstice, I thought, and returned to the writers’ session.  The sun dimmed as the grey returned, but I had Solstice Fire on my desk.

Pre Winter Solstice Musings

It's the eve of the Winter Solstice.  In about sixteen hours the Sun will be the farthest south that it gets, and it will begin climbing more northerly.  The day afterward we'll have a new moon.    I'll be glad for the extra sunlight.  

Tomorrow I'll be laying out a spiral and holding ritual space for a Solstice Lights Spiral Walk.  The forecast is calling for more clement weather this year.  With any luck, I'll be able to ignite a candle with the light of the solstice sun.  Last year it rained and rained and rained, which made having an outside spiral walk with candles challenging.  This year we're a little more prepared for uncooperative weather with LED backups and more covered lights.  Also, we have an indoor Plan B if it looks like a Second Flood is going to happen.  At least a horrific cold snap, which I'd seen in a long-term forecast last week, doesn't appear to be happening.  

What the Winter Solstice means to me is that this is a time to examine the structures that sustain and renew us for the rest of the year.  That there's a New Moon about twenty-four hours later means that both the conscious, primary processing, and the unconscious, secondary processing modes are focused on the same inventory of systems of maintenance.  At the risk of sounding like Dion Fortune raving her herself, the deity that I associate with this time of year is the Castellan, who sits on the Inward Deosil Spiral between the Grid of Systems and the Tree of History. 

I believe this calls for a Tree of Life tarot reading with a yearly-planner and scones.

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Today I spent the morning in a Zoom conference writing with other writers.  I managed to polish and write a bit on a short story that I've been toying with for the last few months.  I've been discovering the plot as I go along, and the next step is to focus on what the main character's emotional stakes are—I've got all of the visual eye-candy and cool magical McGuffins in, so right now the story is functioning on a wonder-story level, but it needs more work to function on a "character dissatisfied with their situation" level.   

Writing Ritual

One of the habits I've gotten into is wrapping and unwrapping my wireless keyboard in a lavender, maroon, and navy  tea towel embroidered with geometric letter forms.  If I don't protect the keyboard while it's in my shoulder bag, dust and hair and fluff are more likely to get into the keys, and I can imagine the keys getting damaged by a stray pencil or book or something stuffed into the bag.  I want to make writing a kind of ritual, and unfolding the fabric from the keyboard when I write on my mobile device is supposed to put me into a kind of writing space.  When I'm done, I try to pause and think about how I'm putting the keyboard away as I carefully fold up the fabric around it.    

In my mind, I'm remembering times at the Episcopal Church, where the priests would gather at the altar after the communion to veil the chalice and paten.  I think I must have been six or eight, it's a strong image of three oldish men--probably Father Neville, Father Chadwick, and someone else--in white cassocks.  Someone's wearing a green chasuble, and another one a white one with red highlights.  And they carefully put the paten on top of the chalice, and fold a green cloth over the front, creasing the fabric into a trapezoid shape.  

However, when I was putting away the sacred keyboard, carefully and methodically folding the fabric around it, it occurred to me that it looked like some sort of compulsive-obsessive disorder.  It isn't.  It's me wishing I could dress up in robes and have everything be a ritual.  

Yesterday's Tapes, Tomorrow's Stories

Arg.  I've been wanting to write, and write mindfully, and practice, and this has been the last few days where that doesn't happen.  Dion Fortune was right:  when you try to accomplish a spiritual goal, a zillion distractions rise up to bar your way.

Working out:   Monday was a Work Day from Hell, and I got home late, so I went to the gym Monday night.  I did about 150 calories on the rowing machine in about fifteen minutes.  I've managed to reach a cruising point of about 720 cal / hour which feels good.  I did some extra free-weight things.

Writing:  Tuesday, someone asked me about Arcosanti, and the next thing I knew, I was reliving a particularly obnoxious moment.  I apologized for stepping onto a soapbox and we joked about Capricorns never forgetting, and she said she was a Cancer and that Cancers feel people's emotions, and I said, "Oh Capricorns feel things, too; we just don't let anyone see."  And I joked about how I should have a circle of friends, and we'd light candles, and I'd mime returning various strings to pictuers of some people from my past, and I'd say things like, "This is the string of anger that ties me to the past, and I return it to you."  

So.  Here I am Wednesday morning, writing, and focusing on writing.  But I sometimes play tapes in my head, and I'm thinking that one way to put the tapes away so I can focus on today and where I am may be to use a version of the tapes as character motivation.  Hmmm.   That  leads to the question of just how close to get to writing as therapy.  But then again, on the other hand, I read about published authors who have had terrible years and written from that place.  Anyway, Tuesday's particular tape has given me a story idea I want to work with.

Working out:  Wednesday was another day where the afternoon was spent dealing with Other Things and writing.  So I went to the gym in the evening.  I managed 200 calories in 17 minutes, followed by some weights-on-string lunges, lat pull-downs, triceps curls, power-station curl-ups, some dumbbell curls, and some other free-weight work.  

Writing:  I'm  working from some hard-copy of a rough draft of a 6000 word fairy-tale re-working.  Forster's aspect of Plot is rearing its head, and I can see that I need to show the Princess's emotional reactions much more than I am now.  On a story "and-then" level, the manuscript mostly works, but the plot "why" is weak.  I can see how the Princess's dialog in one section needs to be returned to match the Elizabethan style she used in the first quarter.  And as I was working out, my rowing machine guided fantasy of the Moon Priest in a Boat Prow turned a little bit into imagining the Princess getting out of her dilemma.  

Writing as Spritiual Practice

I read an article by Damien Walter and the big message that I took from it is that writing should be a practice which is approached as a spiritual practice -- something you set aside time to do every day, like meditation or prayer, because it makes you a better person more fully engaged.  There was also some additional benefits, like being a productive, happy writer (instead of a blocked, product-product-product writer).  I'll need to re-read this and think about how I can apply it.

On a slightly related note, yesterday I attended the memorial for Anne Warren Smith.  Anne was the mother of one of my high school friends.  She was (which I hadn't realized) very active in the Corvallis folk music scene, and (which I did know) a writer (I took one of her classes around 1997).  Many folks there met her when they were in their teens and had maintained a relationship with her into adulthood.  What struck me was how much guidance and mentoring she was able to provide during her very creative and productive life.